A Pretty Good Brand Of Sorghum That Is New To Me

I have written several times on this blog about various brands of sorghum which is one of my favorite foods.  I use it in a variety of ways including eating it in hot cereal, no pancakes and hoecakes, and for cooking at times.  I had run out of my favorite local, Morgan County Kentucky sorghum from Holbrook Brothers recently and actually done without for a couple of weeks since I have seriously worked to minimize my contacts in the world of the Cornona Virus and an uncaring White House.  But we ran out of several things we use regularly about two weeks ago and I took a trip to Save-A-Lot in Sandy Hook, Kentucky, about 25 miles away because they have a newer, larger, more airy store than our local store which is small, tightly packed with narrow, congested aisles and, in today's world, that is not someplace I want to be even with a mask and gloves.  The Sandy Hook store also has a large, well stocked produce department and produce was one of things we needed most.  

I had not even added sorghum to my list before I went to the store and was surprised to see a relatively local brand on a display near the produce section.  The maker is Lloyd Roe Farms in Pomeroyton, Kentucky, in adjoining Menifee County.  Since I had been without sorghum for a couple of weeks, I grabbed a jar and added it to my cart.  I neglected to check it closely but noticed later that it had some granulation visible through the clear glass jar.  When I got it home and tried it, I discovered that it was granulated close to 60%.  I blame this oversight on the fact that at about the same time I grabbed the sorghum I was also beginning to suffer symptoms of some virus or other which dissipated in about three hours and which I am sure was not Coronoa.  I have also seen my local doctor since then and he agrees.  But, when I realized that the sorghum was severely granulated, I knew that I had  bit of mild work to do to reliquify the sorghum.  I did sample the sorghum with a spoon before I tried to reliquify it and found it to be sweet, not bitter, not scorched, and a pretty good variety of sorghum if you discounted the granulation.  My favorite method of reconstituting granulated sorghum or honey is to heat it in a pan of hot water on the stove.  I will place the open jar in enough water to rise about half way up the jar, bring it to a boil and immediately turn the heat off and allow the honey or sorghum to sit in the hot water until it cools to about room temperature.  I check it then to see if it has fully returned to its liquid form.  If not, I repeat the process until it fully back to its liquid state.  The second time sufficed well for this particular jar of sorghum.  Let me say at this point that I also do not hold Lloyd Roe Farms responsible for the fact that the sorghum was granulated even though I know that overcooking sorghum can result in granulation.  But overcooking also usually results in scorching and that is unmistakable by taste or smell.  This sorghum was not scorched and I do not think it was overcooked even the least bit.  I just think the store probably had it in stock too long resulting in the granulation.  I will also say that, at some time in the future, I will locate a freshly cooked jar of Lloyd Roe Sorghum and give it one more honest test.  

After being heated to its liquid state, the sorghum was tasty, sweet, not bitter, not granulated, not scorched and a perfectly acceptable brand of sorghum with only one or two minor points to be discussed.  It was thin and I like thick sorghum which has not been overcooked or scorched.  But the thinness could also be due to having been heated twice in a hot water bath.  The other point I have to bring up is that the jar is a clear glass jar which is about the same height of a regular quart Mason jar in which we find most brands of good local sorghum anywhere in the country.  But, the jar does not have that signature pot belly or bulge in the middle which regular Mason jars have.  As a result this jar, hold what the label says is 35 ounces or .992233 kilograms or 2.1875 pounds which is considerably less than that typical pot bellied Mason jar holds.  Most brands of sorghum I buy in those pot bellied Mason jars are labeled to hold 44 ounces or 1250 grams.  That is a difference of about 9 ounces of product at about the same price as the larger jars of other brands.  For me, and for most other buyers, that is an issue most of us will not ignore.  I leave that to the judgment of the reader.  It is a brand of sorghum which is good enough that I will try it again when I find it ungranulated.  But I would be more willing to try it again if I received that other nine ounces and I bet you would too. 

Hiking At Broke Leg Falls On Labor Day!

Broke Leg Falls Photo by Roger D. Hicks

On Labor Day, Monday, September 3, 2018, my wife Candice & I traveled about 30 or so miles from our house to Broke Leg Falls County Park in Menifee County, KY, between Ezel and Wellington right on US 460.  Since Candice is in a wheelchair, she could not hike or even easily access the handful of available picnic tables since there are either steps or rough routes across grass to all of them.  She gracefully had come up with the idea for the trip so I could get some hiking in and continue my daily exercise routine.  She took a book and her reading glasses and found a shady spot in the edge of the parking lot to read.  I took our camera, which is possibly on its last legs.  I do not waste my time, money, or effort on an I-Phone since I really do not care to see the majority of people with their faces stuck in their phones in a multitude of places where they should either be paying attention to those around them or the scenery. I sure as hell have no intentions of becoming a part of that rampant desocialization of America.  I also somewhat despise the practice of taking selfies and have never done that and never will.  I use the internet every day of my life but last October on a 26 day road trip vacation across the south and southwest I was probably not on the internet five days total for any amount of time and did not miss it. But, anyway, I took some photographs of the area around Broke Leg Falls and will add some of them here.

Broke Leg Falls Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Broke Leg Falls has a long and interesting history and I am certain that it extends well into prehistory as well. Since I am not very well versed in geology, I am uncertain just how far back in prehistory the area was formed. There are several commonly used travel and hiking websites which have pages devoted to the falls and I have provided links to two of those above. The website KYHomeTownLocator is one to which I have not bothered to provide a link because of their erroneous and condescending decision to list it as Broken Leg Falls which is not and has never been the correct name of the site.  It has always been and will always be Broke Leg Falls.  Enough said about that website and their condescending ignorance.  For many years, Broke Leg Falls was under private ownership and for awhile you had to pay ten cents to see the falls and there was a restaurant beside the highway run by the owners.  Then for  a few years, it was leased by the Kentucky Parks Department and operated as a state park.  Then, presumably because of low traffic and/or money losses, it was allowed to revert to private control.  Eventually, a few years ago, Menifee County bought the property and returned it to use as a county park.  The tornado which destroyed West Liberty, KY, on March 2, 2012, ravaged the trees around the falls and they are still not fully recovered.  The county wisely, and partly due to the difficulty of the geography, decided to leave most of the down timber around the falls to lay where it fell but cleared the paths and steps down to an area below the falls, built two picnic shelters, and set up a few other picnic tables after the tornado.

Broke Leg Falls Photo by Roger D. Hicks

No one knows exactly how Broke Leg falls got its name but it is safe to assume that some person or animal most likely suffered a broken leg in the area in the early days of white settlement.  I have never seen or heard any claims as to any Native American name the falls might have had.  But I am certain that the tribes which commonly hunted in the area before the white settlers came had to have a name for such a unique place.  The major waterfall is somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty feet high with a narrow, damp, and slick rock overhang which must have been used by both Native Americans and settlers at times. The overhang is not deep or dry enough to have been a long term living situation for either of those groups.  But I am certain that it has provided brief shelter in bad weather for thousands of years. The stream which runs over the falls is small and in places can be jumped across above the falls and most probably below also although I have never hiked the downstream area.  The stream flows from a small hilltop not far to the north of the falls and drops over a few small riffles until it arrives at the major fall.  There are a few pools of water which might be knee deep at times but are still not filled with fish, frogs or turtles.  The only wildlife I saw while I was there was a skink but there were several people in the area and some wildlife might have disappeared to avoid the noise and foot traffic.  But I also suspect that the falls are too high and the stream too small to support much wildlife of an aquatic nature or to allow it to return to the area after washouts.

Broke Leg Falls, Photo by Roger D. Hicks

  

Broke Leg Falls is a beautiful spot in Northeastern Kentucky, not far from Natural Bridge State Park, the Daniel Boone National Forest, the Red River Gorge, and Cave Run Lake and is well worth spending an hour or two hiking or having a picnic.  I actually met a couple from Northern Indiana who were on a motorcycle trip who had stopped to see the falls.  Visit it whenever you are in the area.  But be aware that there was no Porta-Potty on site and you would be well advised to go to the bathroom before you arrive.  There is also no overnight camping, no food available, and the area is thinly settled, but in a nod to modern business practices, there is a Dollar General Store at Wellington, KY, about three miles away which has a public bathroom and everything else you need to avoid starvation.

Broke Leg Falls Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Kentucky Proud Expo Morehead, KY April 16, 2016

My wife, Candice, and I attended a Kentucky Proud Expo in Morehead, KY, on April 16, 2016, primarily because Candice wanted to and I wanted to please her, or at least stay out of trouble.  The Kentucky Proud program is a program of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture which helps small farmers and farm families in the state to market their products.  To some degree, it also appears to be promoting the development of unique and unusual products in Kentucky.  It is, at least in part, a response to the end of the federal tobacco support system which caused many small farmers who had depended for years on tobacco to stop growing tobacco and to either leave agriculture all together or to seek other means of generating income on small family farms.  A secondary part of the Kentucky Proud program is the Appalachia Proud program which, according to their website, "celebrates the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of eastern Kentucky while at the same time honoring its traditions".  Based on one day of exposure to the program, I don't buy into the sales pitch entirely or perhaps even much at all.  I have, for many years, been a believer that Appalachia and Appalachian Kentucky have been far better off when most of the rest of the world leaves us alone.  I have also seen far too many examples of people and organizations which came to the region with the best of intentions and proved absolutely that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  But I have to admit that my overall impression of the Kentucky Proud Expo was primarily positive. 

We spent about two hours in the Morehead Convention Center at the expo talking to exhibitors, sampling foods, viewing products, and buying a few.  We met a few truly unique and interesting people doing, or attempting to do, some worthwhile and productive work on small farms in Kentucky and Appalachian Kentucky.  But, as a dyed in the wool native Appalachian, I was not convinced that several of the these people were Appalachians or even Kentuckians.  It struck me that, as has been happening here for at least a hundred years, we have attracted a few individuals who might have fallen or been thrown off the edge of the world somewhere else.  California is not the only location with a tendency to attract strange wanderers.  

For more than three years (March 1989 to July 1992), I worked for Vision Quest, the controversial, for profit juvenile delinquency program.  For most of that time, I was the advance scout for the East Coast Wagon Trains.  That job required me to locate campsites for two wagon trains each comprised of 75 juveniles, 35 staff, 50 head of horses and mules, and a plethora of vehicles, mobile offices and trailers.  It was my responsibility to find a constant string of camp sites of 5 acres or more where this conglomeration could camp for up to 4 days at a time free of charge.  During my time there, I traveled with the wagon trains from Okeechobee, Florida, to Hudson, Michigan, to Okeechobee, to Peebles, Ohio, to Okeechobee, to South Carolina, a total of more than 7,000 miles before I left the job.  As a result, I was a great deal of various kinds of agriculture in a dozen states.  Yet, at the Kentucky Proud Expo, I ran into a couple of things I had never seen and found them quite interesting.  

Two of the most interesting things we saw involved raising yaks and selling yak products in Menifee County KY, and raising alpacas and selling alpaca products in Boyd County KY.  We met the owners of Silver Run Ranch Alpacas and found them to be quite interesting.  They make and sell a variety of alpaca products on a farm in Boyd County KY.  The operation is run by two brothers who also have outside jobs.  But they raise alpacas and sell alpaca apparel which is beautiful, soft, warm, and colorful. They are interesting to talk to, informative, and friendly.  I had been exposed to llamas once in northwestern Pennsylvania but never to alpacas.  We were offered the opportunity to visit at some point and see the operation and we definitely will do that.  Their website can be found at: Silver Run Ranch Alpacas Due to the information we were provided at the expo, I would never recommend anyone to just show up unannounced.  Contact them first if you ever intend to ask for a visit.  

We also met Gregor Dike and Linda Smith-Dike who operate Zhi-ba Shing-ga Tibetan Yaks in Menifee County KY.  They raise yaks and sell yak based apparel and, through another organization, they also sell some yak meat.  I assume it is necessary for them to sell their yaks for slaughter to an FDA approved operation which then butchers and markets the meat.  Both Candice and I love to experience new foods and new experiences.  I can't wait to get an opportunity to eat yak.  They are also willing to have visitor with the expected guidelines of advance approval and scheduling.  They can be found online at:  Zhi-ba Shing-ga Tibetan Yaks  I do have to say that I was disappointed to hear they do not milk their yaks or sell yak milk products.  After having read several books and articles over the years from mountain climbers and other visitors to Tibet, I have always wanted to try yak butter tea.  I must admit that many people I have read who had the experience did not care for it. But I still love to try new things and yak butter tea along with durian is on my list of the things others hate that I am dying to try.  I am sure will try to make a trip to the yak farm before summer is over.  

Candice and I would not presume to call ourselves read foodies but we are very broad ranging in our tastes, love to cook and eat, and, I repeat myself, love to seek out and experience all things new and interesting.  Candice had found the expo on the Internet and wanted to go to see new foods, recipes, and Kentucky products.  She bought two bars of soap from a place called Hidden Holler Soap Studio.  She has tried the lavender already and found it acceptable but not overwhelmingly positive. She says it doesn't really have a great smell but does seem to make her hair fell fuller. She also bought a bar of coconut oil soap and will try it later.  She also bought a jar of Ale 8 One based salsa from a place called Forgotten Foods Farm in Olive Hill.  We just tried the salsa last night with tortilla chips and Candice says she likes it enough to buy it again.  I found it too mild and too sweet.  This seems to be a good time to say that I am not a food critic and don't necessarily strive to be one.  I do enjoy a wide variety of foods, cook from time to time, watch a lot of food based television, and always seek new food experiences.  But I know what I like, have a fairly well developed palate, and can generally discuss food intelligently and explain succinctly why I do or do not like a particular item.  As a lifetime aficionado of Ale 8 One, this was not the best use to which the soft drink has ever been applied. I could not resist the opportunity to buy a half pint jar of what Forgotten Foods Farm was selling under the name paw paw jam.  I have written about my love of paw paw's on this blog in the past.  That post can be found at Paw Paw Post  I brought the jar home and even Candice couldn't wait to try it.  We made two slices of toast that night and cracked open the paw paw jam.  To my surprise there was absolutely no taste or smell of paw paw's in it.  As anyone who has ever eaten paw paw's can tell you, the two most distinctive qualities of a paw paw are the flavor and the smell.  To that degree, they rival another of my old time favorites, the plum granny.  The ingredients of the jam were listed as paw paw pulp, sugar, pectin, and citric acid.  The ingredient list might just as well have been similar to one of those on a jar of something innocuous and cheap found at your local discount foods store and carrying a brand name you don't recognize and don't want to remember.  They might just as well have read "sugar, dextrose, fructose, cane syrup, and artificial flavors and colors".  The best part of the paw paw jam experience was the eager, child like anticipation of believing I had just found a treasure I had imagined since childhood, another wonderful use of my favorite native fruit of Appalachia.  I suppose balloons are made to burst.  Dreams are made to die.  Illusions and delusions are made to live forever and grow just like Topsy. But, at least, I still have  a very nice half pint jar in which to save my change in order to pay for my next little educational experience. 

We also stopped, but failed to get a business card from, a couple who make and sell hot sauces from a variety of peppers they raise in their back yard garden.  I screwed up my courage and sampled what they say is their version of hot sauce made from the infamous ghost pepper.  Before I tried it, they assured me it was mild enough to not be lethal.  I have gradually developed a taste for more and more hot foods although I will always consider it an insult to a cook to ask for hot sauce in a restaurant.  I like hot food up to about the point I start to sweat, hiccup, tear, and develop a mild nasal drip.  I have to admit that when I heard "Ghost Pepper" I was fearful.   My fears were unfounded.  If it was truly made from ghost peppers, they had sufficiently diluted the capsaicin to prevent possible damage to the innocent and unsuspecting.  I tried a small sample on a neutral cracker and only developed mild hiccups, a bit of a nasal drip, and no sweating or tearing.  The adventure fell a bit short of the anticipation.  

I also bought a container of peanut brittle from a nice couple from Lexington.  It was acceptable but not especially great.  We stopped at a couple of vendors who were selling their own versions of spices since we buy a wide variety of spices and use them regularly.  We were not impressed enough with any of them to buy their wares.  We spent a few minutes talking to a nice woman who made beautiful quilts.  She was displaying a UK pattern and a strawberry pattern.  But she sews them on a machine and I will always prefer those which are totally hand stitched as they were in the days of my youth.  

My overall impression of the Kentucky Proud Expo was positive enough to go to another at some other time and in some other portion of the state since I got the impression many of the vendors set some mileage limit on how far they travel to the expos.  But I remain convinced that many of the vendors and state staff involved fall sufficiently short in their knowledge base about Appalachia that I believe Appalachia Proud is simply another marketing tool. 

Christmas Hospitality In Appalachia

An Interesting Evening In Menifee County Kentucky

This past Saturday, December 7, 2013, my wife Candice and I took  a trip from our home in White Oak, Morgan County Kentucky down US460 into Frenchburg, KY, the county seat of Menifee County to post some handbills for an upcoming auction.  Along the way, we stopped at nearly every kind of business one can find in a small county in Kentucky or in Appalachia in general for that matter.  Altogether, the trip was probably about 80 miles since it is roughly 35 miles from our home to Frenchburg and we took a bit of a side trip to Cannel City on our way home.  We spent the biggest part of the afternoon on this trip, had a ball, and experienced one heartwarming dose of Appalachian hospitality like I had not seen in a while.  We put out a few handbills along the way and came to the Oldfield Farm Store and Mize, KY, post office where we once again saw a US Post Office being run inside a privately owned business which does not happen much anymore.  Mize is one of the small post offices which came up for possible closing last year as the post office management tried to complete a plan by which it can become profitable again.  But, like many other small post offices across the country, Mize escaped the budget axe at least for the present. 

After a brief stop at Mize, we travelled on west into Menifee County.  Along the way, I reminded Candice of a place just across the county line which we had visited several years ago known as the Swamp Valley Museum.  It had been run for about 50 years by a man named Clayton Wells who also had several old log buildings full of assorted antiques along with his country store.  Clayton Wells is now dead and I told Candice the store was probably closed.  But as we rounded the curve, I saw wood smoke coming from the store chimney and surmised that maybe Clayton's children were continuing to run the store.  We pulled in and I walked inside just as I would have in the past only to find that the store was actually closed and now being used by his children, widow, and other younger descendants as a family gathering place.  But I was invited inside the store anyway by Clayton's son, Gary Wells, a former deputy coroner of Menifee County and current member of the volunteer fire department.  There was a large number of the family in the old building which has been kept just as it was when Clayton was alive.  There was a large cast iron Dutch oven full of homemade beef soup steaming on the wood stove and Gary Wells, the cook, quickly invited us to have a bowl.  I told him I would have to check with Candice, who is in a wheelchair, to see if she was interested. Candice usually stays in the van when I am making short stops rather than make the effort to get in and out of buildings which are not handicapped accessible.  It turns out she was interested in going inside and eating with the Wells Family and Gary and one of his brothers helped me get her up the single step & through the door into the store.  The family made room for us, passed out paper bowls & plastic spoons for the soup, and gave us both a cold Ale 8 One, the national soft drink of Eastern Kentucky.  Ale 8 One is a mild ginger ale made exclusively in Winchester, KY, not far from Frenchburg & is drunk daily by thousands of Appalachian Kentuckians.  It probably deserves a separate post at some time in the future since it  is a Kentucky institution.  The store, although it is just as it was the last time I was there in about 2001, is no longer operating.  This was a family gathering in a place that is near and dear to their hearts and which had become a shrine dedicated to family memories.  But they still invited two strangers in, fed us, talked for about an hour about country stores, antiques, local politics, family life in Appalachia, and a dozen other topics just like we were all old friends.  They even allowed us to bring our 13 year old Dachshund, Giggles, into the store too.  She walked around in the floor along with a small great grandchild of Clayton Wells and was ignored just as if she was also a member of the family.  The soup was great.  The hospitality was a wonderful reminder of how people all across Appalachia used to treat strangers.  It reminded me of many visits I made as a traveling salesman or simply a traveler to many stores and homes across Appalachia in the last 60 years. It also reminded me of how many times I had seen my parents doing the same thing in our country store in the 1950's & 1960's.   The experience was a bright spot near Christmas which showed us the Christmas spirit as it had been long ago and may well never be very often again.  We enjoyed it greatly and I will post some photos in the near future of the Swamp Valley Museum and Store since I did not have my camera with me.  Perhaps in the spring I will go back on a Saturday when I can find the family in and take photographs for a while. 

For now I will let a description suffice.  The store is a small wood frame structure with a low porch in front.  Nearly every square inch of the building is covered with vintage to antique advertising and political signs.  The parking lot is slightly graveled and gets muddy in wet weather.  There is an old wire corn crib right beside the store and a fine old log house full of antiques  which used to serve as the Swamp Valley Museum about 75 feet downstream on the side of the parking lot.  It is fine place to visit although it is no longer being operated commercially and I would not expect the Wells Family to always be this hospitable to the random stranger.   But it is a fitting reminder of life in general stores in Appalachia when I was a child. 

When we started back home, we took a side trip to Cannel City, KY, to stop in at the Caney Valley Grocery which I have mentioned in this blog in the past.  It is an old wood frame two story store, still being operated by Roger Finch and family and also filled with antiques.  I was pleased to see a small display case full of vintage to antique patent medicines on the top shelf in the store to protect it from too many hands.  I had sold Roger Finch most of the patent medicines a few weeks ago and he was so enamored with them he brought the antique display case down from the upstairs antique shop to display them.  They include Dr. Drake's Glesco, Old Settler water treatment, Cloverine Salve, and several other items no longer on sale anywhere.  Altogether, it was a fine day on the road in Appalachia and I cannot wait to do it again.  I highly recommend a day long drive along US460 in Eastern Kentucky anytime one can find the time.  The remaining two lane sections of the highway contain some very interesting places to stop, visit, take a few photographs, talk a while, and occasionally see a bit of the Appalachia I remember from my childhood. US460 runs all across Kentucky from the Virginia border in Pike County to the intersection with US60 in Frankfort.  It is well worth spending a day or three driving all the remaining two lane sections in a leisurely trip to see a few reminders of life as it used to be.   At some point in the future, I will try to write a longer post about US460 in the My Favorite Places In Appalachia collection.  But for now I just hope it is also one of your favorite places. 


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UPDATE: September 25, 2019

The Jesse Stuart Foundation has just released a new book called "True Christmas Stories From The Heart Of Appalachia" and it includes my story, "Christmas On Beaver Creek", along with stories by Jesse Stuart, Cratis Williams, Bill Best, and my two good friends Edwina Pendarvis and Emily Steiner. It has 43 stories from 39 different authors. I have a few copies with my autograph and a personal inscription for whomever you choose which are available at the same price the publisher charges for unautographed copies.  They are $25.00 each plus $3.00 shipping which is what the publisher has set as the price.  I will accept payment through PayPal at rchicks@mrtc.com   You can contact me at Roger D. Hicks, 65, Highway 1081, West Liberty, KY 41472,606-743-2087, or e-mail at rchicks@mrtc.com  Merry Christmas!